


Heave and Turn the World Around

by ChasingFrames (chasethegoal)



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-05
Updated: 2011-06-05
Packaged: 2017-10-20 03:38:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/208353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chasethegoal/pseuds/ChasingFrames
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Countrycide, Ianto doesn't really know how bad off he is; Owen realizes he gives a damn, and Tosh and Jack are islands in the stormy sea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heave and Turn the World Around

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "Hoist That Rag" by Tom Waits.

It was with a great reluctance that Owen left his apartment in the wake of Brynblaidd. Of course, it was with great reluctance that he ever left a bed where a lovely woman was laying, but today there was really no choice. Gwen was in no condition to head in to work; Tosh wasn't, either, though whether that was going to stop her was up in the air. Ideally, she wouldn't; he didn't think another day of watching the rift spit out the refuse of the universe was going to help her recover any. And Ianto was concussed. In theory, Owen had the day off too, but he didn't like the thought of making Jack deal with it on his own.

He was definitely not expecting to come into the Plass to find that the tourist office was open.

"The fuck do you think you're doing here?" he asked, door nudged open with his foot. Ianto looked up at him with those huge eyes, face bruised and shoulders stiff even from the other side of the room. The smell of coffee was almost enough to make Owen forgive him, but he had to be firm.

"Light work only, I promise," Ianto said. His voice was low and exhausted.

"You need to be resting. No light work, you shouldn't even be up and at 'em yet. Not with a concussion. What happens if you fall down the stairs? I don't feel like cleaning up after you!"

Ianto only barely reacted. He quirked his eyebrow, but nothing more. "I've already been chastised and told to stay up here. If you want coffee you have to come fetch it yourselves."

Owen narrowed his eyes. "I want to have a look at you, too. See how your concussion is healing."

It spoke volumes that the stupid, stubborn, idiotic bloody Welshman didn't argue. He just flipped the sign on the tourist office and followed Owen down into the Hub. Not into autopsy, though. He'd stopped using it for living patients when Tosh had nearly climbed the walls a few months back. Ianto had had a room cleaned out and a cot set up in it in record time, though Owen suspected it had more to do with the tea-boy and Tosh being friends than anything else. Ianto perched on the edge of the cot, looking even more out of place than usual in his suit, back and shoulders stiff and straight. He was in pain, all right, not that the stupid sod would ever admit it.

He checked eye dilation and movement before reaching out to touch Ianto's head, looking for any residual swelling. His hair was soft and he leaned into the the touch, unconsciously broadcasting how touch-starved he really was. Owen tried not to think about that too hard. He didn't hate Ianto, contrary to popular belief, but he wasn't a touchy-feely kind of person no matter what. If he gave an extra sweep of his hands through Ianto's hair before pulling away, though, it was because he understood the feeling.

"Your head is harder than it looks," he said finally. "Lemme have a look at your ribs, now."

Ianto balked at that. "They're not broken, Owen. I'm fine."

"You're moving like they're on fire, and I won't give you anything for 'em until I've had a look."

Refusing to medicate always got people to agree with him, and this was no exception. Ianto stripped to the waist, movements slow and obviously painful. Owen had to help him with the waistcoat. Who the hell wore a waistcoat this day and age anyway? Ianto's torso was a mess of bruises, and prodding along his ribs made him gasp more than once. Better than they'd been the day before, anyway. Still. "I'm with Jack. Stay upstairs and keep the tourists happy, if you won't stay home. I'd prefer if you were in bed watching telly, myself."

Ianto looked like he wanted to say something, but just nodded and started to dress himself again. Owen prepared a needle of painkillers -- he was a bastard, not a sadist -- and waited till Ianto had started to button up his cuffs before stepping forward. He pulled the unbuttoned sleeve up to give him the dose.

The Welshman looked like he might collapse with relief.

Owen pushed him lightly backward so he sat. "Let it get through you, then you can go up. I was serious about you falling down the stairs." He'd seen this kind of response to the alien painkillers before, and it always made his heart race a little, but it wasn't harmful. After a minute, the dizziness would pass.

"Owen…"

It should have passed, at least. Instead, Ianto passed out, slumping against the wall bonelessly.

Owen pressed a hand to his pulse-point, then shifted Ianto to lay on his back. Slow and steady, breathing normally…Owen ran to autopsy for his comm link to call for Jack.

"Did tea-boy sleep last night?" he demanded without any pleasantries.

"Good morning to you too," Jack sighed. "Not really. Nightmares. I got him to stay here at least so he didn't do anything stupid."

Owen breathed a shuddering sigh of relief. "He's passed out in sickbay after I gave him something for the pain. I'm getting the scanner to be sure but hopefully this one can be chalked up to exhaustion."

There was a long moment of silence over the link, then Jack slammed into sickbay with all the grace of a rampaging elephant. "You're sure it wasn't your dosage that put him out?" he snapped, surveying Ianto's sleeping form.

He looked more calm than Owen had ever seen him.

"I barely gave him any, Jack. Enough to take the edge off, because he's a walking bruise, but I'm not overdosing your staff for fuck's sake."

Jack shot him a look. "I didn't -- sorry. I'm jumpy. We've had enough things backfire lately is all." His hand hovered like he wanted to touch Ianto, but he didn't. "Scanned him yet?"

"As soon as you get out of the way."

Jack took a step backward, letting Owen work. Ianto's scans showed nothing he wasn't already expecting -- bruises, cuts, one fractured rib, a concussion, white cell count lower than usual (Ianto's white blood cells were always a little low; nothing dangerous, but annoying), and scar tissue. He double-checked -- Ianto had a lot of scars and they had tricked the scanner in the past, hiding something more important going on beneath, but there was nothing. "Exhaustion," he decided. "Best to let him sleep, really."

Jack looked like he wanted to argue, then thought better of it. "I'll grab a blanket," he said with a sigh. "Tosh is in, if you want to look at her too. If she wants to stay with him I'd say yes, she's kind of worried to death."

Of course she was. She'd taken a bit of a liking to Ianto after they'd discovered the Cyberwoman, and it'd only gotten stronger when he'd risked himself to try to save her. Owen hadn't understood it. He had hated him at first, when Lisa was on his autopsy table being prepared to go into storage, but when he visited Ianto during his short suspension, he'd realized how alike they were. Lisa had been Ianto's life, and if it'd been Owen and Katie -- yeah, he'd have done the same damn thing. Not that he'd admit it to anyone else, but he hadn't been as hard on Ianto since realizing that.

He went to find Tosh, who was fluttering around her computers like a hummingbird unsure which flower to touch first. He took her arm, making her jump.

"Just me," he said, best imitation of Jack's dashing smile on his face. "Time for your daily run of scans, luv."

She sighed, a little petulant about being pulled from her computers, but nodded. "Is Ianto coming in? I thought he stayed here last night but…"

"He's sleepin' in the exam room. Means you get the autopsy table for your checkup, I'm afraid."

She broke away to go peek in on Ianto. Jack had draped the blanket over him, and even found a pillow from god-knows-where. The lights were down and a bottle of water on the floor next to the cot. Jack himself was gone. Tosh knelt on the floor to stroke at Ianto's hair a little, smiling when he didn't respond. "Out cold then. Probably good."

"Don't make me drug you and throw you in there with him, Tosh. Come on, exam time."

She stuck her tongue out, but did as she was told.

* * *

His head and neck were pounding with tension when he woke, curled on his side on something not quite comfortable. The cot, he remembered. He'd been in the exam room. On the cot. He'd slept on the cot? He didn't want to open his eyes, but forced himself to do it anyway. The door had been left open, so it wasn't completely dark. Tosh was tapping at a laptop next to the cot, back against the wall, face lit up by the LCD screen. The sound of Owen banging instruments drifted from the next room. He was wrapped in a blanket, and there was an IV in the hand next to his head.

"The hell?" he groaned.

Tosh jumped a little, then grinned at him, teeth shining a bit in the light of her computer. "You're awake!" Her voice stayed low but happy.

"I don't remember falling asleep," Ianto whispered. "What happened?"

She put a hand on his head, her touch cold. "The pain meds knocked you out 'cause you hadn't slept. How do you feel now?"

Stiff and sore wasn't a good answer, so he just shrugged. "Better."

"I'll get Owen." She smiled tenderly. "Don't move til he's had a look."

She stepped out of the room, and he tried to stop his head from spinning. How long had he been asleep? Why was Tosh at the hub? She should be at home, in bed. If she'd been asked to come because of him, he'd feel guilty for ages.

Owen entered, and he didn't look particularly cross, which was something just short of a miracle. He didn't talk much, and when he did it was short and soft. He was still gruff, but he wasn't yelling, and that was all Ianto really could hope for.

"Am I alive?" he asked when the quiet stretched for too long.

"Looks like it," Owen said, double-checking a chart. "Nothin' too bad, looks like. You should sleep more often. And eat. And other useful things like that. I feel like we've had this conversation before in fact."

Ianto didn't rise to the barb. Owen had given him a proper rant about taking care of himself while he'd been on suspension, and threatened any number of uncomfortable medical procedures to make sure he did as he was told. But eating had made him sick, and sleeping was impossible after Brynblaidd. Nightmares of Canary Warf had mixed with Lisa's death, and those were now wound all too tightly with images of heads and hands in refrigerators, a cleaver against his neck, and a soiled gag in his mouth. Even the thought of it now made his heart start to pound a bit, and he had to fight back panic.

"Relax," Owen said sharply.

Ianto took deep breaths. "Sorry."

"Just try not to get too excited for a couple more hours, yeah? You haven't been takin' care of yourself and you need rest, else next time you'll be passin' out for real and not just dozen' off in the middle of your exam."

Ianto blinked. "I did that?"

Owen snorted. "I don't mind, trust me, I was more afraid you'd throw up on me."

Ianto laid his head down and tried to relax. Well, he hadn't done that, at least. Some of his dignity was still intact. But something was fuzzy, still. "Why am I staying here?"

"Because I don't trust you with things like medicine and eating right now. Your brain is a little scrambled and you understated how much pain you were in." He tapped his pen on the clipboard. "I found a few fractures in your wrists, probably from struggling against the handcuffs."

Ianto hadn't even noticed the tight splints around his wrists. "Oh."

"Hollar if they're too tight, by the way. I had to guess since you were out. How's the pain? And no lying."

He shrugged a little. "Six?" It'd been something like an eleven before. Out of ten. He'd gotten used to surviving on caffeine and force of will, which he figured was the only way he'd made it out of bed, much less all the way up to the tourist office and back down again.

"Eat something, then you can have some meds."

Jack came down with a sandwich -- so they were capable of surviving without him ordering lunch after all -- and sat nearby while Ianto ate with small bites. He was thinking hard through recent events, trying to figure out where they all fit. "Jack?"

"Yeah?" Jack had been studying him the whole time, as if waiting for him to speak first.

"I don't…I think there's some gaps in what I remember. I'm not sure what order things happened in, I mean. I don't remember anything after you let me go until this morning." He remembered getting sick, at some point, and Jack holding him down during the night, but he wasn't sure where they fit into everything else.

Jack shrugged. "You were in shock, that can cause memory lapses. We kept you awake and warm and made sure you weren't going to die when we got back." He grinned, a little too broad. "What, worried about your virtue?"

"We'll talk about my virtue when I feel better," Ianto groaned, forcing the last bite into him.

Jack poked his head out to get Owen, who offered up two yellow pills and a bottle of water. Ianto wanted to ask when he could go home, or at least why everyone was acting like they cared, but didn't want to give Owen the satisfaction. He waited until he was alone with Jack again, but then the questions seemed less important. The intense look on Jack's face made anything short of the end of the world seem less important.

"You scared us," Jack said softly.

Ianto winced. Shit. "I'm sorry, sir."

"I didn't mean it like that." Jack came to sit on the edge of the cot, seeming huge compared to how small Ianto felt. "We were scared because we care about our team. You're a part of our team."

Ianto was afraid to break the moment, to realize it was a con to get his trust before they all retconned him to the day he was born. "I should go home, sir. It's not fair for Owen and Tosh to spend their time on me when it's my own fault any--"

Jack put a finger to Ianto's lips, the tiny touch enough to make him freeze. "Stop that. You almost died trying to save Tosh. That's not fucking up, Ianto, that's being a proper teammate and a gentleman. And if there was anything more important right now, they wouldn't be here. But Owen's doing paperwork, and Tosh can code just as well here as she can upstairs." He smiled, this time a small, sweet one, not the huge toothy grins he gave when he was bragging. "You're the most important thing here right now, so get used to it."

Ianto nodded, and tried to hold in his tears until the medication started to make him sleepy, and Jack left. He cried in the dark, quiet as possible, until Tosh returned with her laptop and a sympathetic look. "Ianto?"

He reached for her hand silently, and she took it, squeezing tight. He trusted Tosh. She had come to visit often while he was on suspension. She'd helped him clean the apartment of Lisa's presence; Lisa had never set foot in the place, but her handprint was everywhere, in his possessions, photos, and old gifts. A box was filled and put in a closet for when he was ready. Tosh had been the only one to ask about their life together before Canary Warf, and sharing the memories felt a lot less like he was losing Lisa, and more like he was holding her tight. He'd liked it. And he knew not a word of any of it had been shared with anyone else.

It was okay if Tosh saw him cry.

She soothed him quietly until he stopped, harsh breathing the only residual sign. So much for staying calm, he thought.

She banished the thought with a light kiss on his temple. "What upset you?"

"Dunno why you lot are caring," he admitted. And hell, it hurt to even say it out loud.

"Oh Ianto, no. You don't still think we hate you? We've all forgiven you. And we're not going to leave you alone again."

Had he not been so tired, he would have cried again at that. Still, he held tight to Tosh's hand, and she soothed him until he slept again.

* * *

Owen was dozing in his chair when Ianto groaned as he tried to move, the small sound enough to jolt him into doctor mode. He poked, prodded, and administered another injection in record time, almost entirely without Ianto's input.

"This is a slightly higher dose than earlier, so you'll sleep heavier," he said as he administered the shot. "Should cut down on the nightmares."

"I didn't tell you about nightmares," Ianto said, a little bit of a slur to his words.

"Jack did." Jack had gotten a lovely shiner the night before, in fact. Owen was an expert on nightmares, though his usual remedy involved a fifth of vodka after working too late. The key was in sleeping too deeply for them to reach you. Meds made it easy, and he wouldn't let Ianto get addicted. Weirdly, he cared too much to let him self-destruct.

Owen focused. "Think you can talk for a few minutes? I need some questions answered."

Ianto nodded and sat up, though it looked like it hurt him to do so. Still, Owen needed some answers before they went any further. "Where are your complete medical records?"

Ianto's eyes went wide, deer in the headlights. "Destroyed in Torchwood One," he stuttered.

"See, the thing is, I don't think it was," Owen said. "You worked in the archives, you're good with computers, and you know how to make a personal backup. I'm gonna bet you have them. And I want them, Ianto. I can't do my job properly if I don't know anything about you."

The Welshman looked like he wanted to argue, but in the end, nodded. "I'll bring them to you as soon as I can go home."

"Thank you," he said, gentle as he could manage while maintaining his bastard persona. "Second, I want you to check in with me every few days about how you feel. I talked it over with Jack, and he agrees. It's an option now, it'll become an order if it has to."

Ianto looked like he wanted to sink into the floor. "Am I on probation?"

"No. This is for your health." He sighed. "You hide too much, and this way I can be sure that you're not depressed or anything else. It's not formal, because this is bloody Torchwood for fuck's sake, and we don't do formal. But it's confidential, because I don't feel like telling Jack everything anyway, and you'd never tell me shit if it wasn't." He shut up, because he realized he was babbling, but he desperately wanted Ianto to just accept that this was something that had to happen.

Ianto nodded and sighed. "I'll do it. I just hope it helps."

"Me too." Owen ran through a mental checklist of things he wanted to say. "I'll let you head home in the morning, but I want those files as soon as you come back. Jack's off hunting a weevil so you're stuck with me for a bit." He kicked back, mission accomplished, and put his trainers up on the bedframe.

Ianto suddenly looked uneasy, like it wasn't okay for him to be in the Hub without Jack nearby. "Relax," Owen said reflexively, though it wasn't like he knew enough about Ianto's head to give him the right to say so. Not yet. It didn't work, because Ianto just jumped like he'd been hit.

"Sorry, sorry," he muttered. "I think I'm fine if you want to go, Owen. Really."

"Actually, I was hoping I could get you into starting that talking thing now." He narrowed his eyes. Jack had warned him to wait, let Ianto get used to the idea, but Owen liked to push his luck sometimes. He wanted to see for himself how quickly Ianto was going to jump in, or if he was going to be trouble.

Ianto laid down on the bed and rolled on his side, his back to Owen. He thought it was over, and was getting up to leave when Ianto said, "what do you want to know?"

Oh. Owen sat back down, and considered the question. There was a lot that needed going over, and the medical records would probably give him more to ask about, but for now he went for the obvious. "Tell me about Lisa."

So Ianto did. His voice shook a little as he spoke, but he didn't cry, just rambled. The drugs were helping, Owen, figured, because he'd expected something short and to the point -- an affirmation that he'd loved her, or something of the sort. But what he got was dragging her out of Canary Warf, burning his hands on the metal, months of trying to control her pain, months of trying not to lose hope. "I didn't want to admit that she wasn't Lisa anymore, but I knew it was true."

There was nothing for Owen to say. He let himself reach out, but he didn't touch, just resting his hand on the bed. He could feel tremors through the entire frame, but if asked, he'd blame them on pain and not the subject matter. He'd meant what he'd said, everything would stay between them. He just hadn't expected to care so goddamn much.

He mumbles "that's enough" when Ianto's words start to slur with sleep, and rubs Ianto's neck once -- he hopes it's soothing -- before getting up. "Time to rest."

He leaves and pretends he doesn't hear the soft crying behind him.

* * *

Ianto was up and about the next day, not quite up to tackling Weevils or dragging a sheep up for Myfanwy, but coffee came regularly and the Hub was clean, so no one complained. Tosh greeted him with a little wrapped hard sweet on the edge of her desk; his favorite kind, and he wasn't sure how she had remembered. He gave her a biscuit with her coffee in return.

He'd worried what Owen would say, but he was his usual bastard self. He poked fun at Ianto and Tosh's exchange, then bitched about his own coffee, and Ianto understood. He wasn't going to tell everyone. A weight seemed to lift from Ianto's chest, then, and everything was easier after that.

Jack smiled at him when he brought him coffee, big, warm and honest. "You look better," he said, and for once there didn't seem to be a innuendo hidden in it.

He smiled back, letting their fingers brush. "I feel better."

And he meant it.


End file.
